Why My Characters Never Get a Clean Escape (And Why Yours Shouldn't Either)

If you've read any of my work, chances are you've noticed that the heroes and sheroes of my stories never walk away completely unscathed at the end of the story. There's drama that leads to trauma. There's injury that leads to pain. This is all for good reason.

I love creating characters who present a moral conflict for the audience from the very beginning. As a reader, you go into the book rooting for the hitman, the drug dealer, even the scammer and con artist. Their stories are always ones of messy means of survival, and I enjoy building them in ways that force the reader to sympathize with them. I also enjoy writing about the innocent characters--the wives and girlfriends caught in the crossfire, the working-class characters just trying to make a way, the college students scrambling their way through the semester. These characters are naturally loveable.

No matter how loveable I make my characters, though, they never make it through the story without changing in some way. Sometimes, they change for the better; sometimes, they end up traumatized and damaged. Why? Because happy endings aren't always honest endings. Sometimes, there are serious consequences for your actions, even in a fictional world. The characters can't always get away with their criminal activity. Sometimes, they get arrested. Other times, they die. That's an honest ending. We all love Happily Ever After's, but let's be real for a second. Sometimes, a HEA just isn't realistic. In Mona Liza, what happens to Trell was inevitable. Prix and Post staked him out, and it was only a matter of time before his ill deeds caught up with him anyway. In Never Going Back, Bryan's actions really could've led to much worse outcomes than what he got in the end. And who would've thought LaTrisha and Dazzalyn would've ended up literally fighting for their lives in the Living in His World of Lies series? At the root of every story, there has to be some kind of change in the character(s). Otherwise, what are we writing about? What is this book about if the characters come out on the other end of all the drama and killing the same as they went into it? "Nobody got shot. They just shot at each other." Come on, now. Let's be for real. Readers live for that Pop! Pop! Pow! The bloodshed and the death. The grit and the grime. But only when it actually results in some sort of change or consequence.

Another reason why my characters never get a clean escape is because trauma, past choices, and loyalty follow characters. In the Danger series, we see Alayzia making bad decisions that we later find out are greatly influenced by her mother and her upbringing. That past trauma leads her to lose some of the things and people who are most precious to her. In the Living in His World of Lies series, Orlando and Antonio's past choices come back to affect not only the two men who made them, but everyone around them as well. In Mona Liza, Liz was loyal to Trell to a fault, and his actions led to her own life being in danger as well. No matter how long ago these choices were made, they tend to come back to haunt the characters later, and that is the book. That's the story. That's where the writer comes in and tells the story of what happens as a result.

The bottom line is that readers appreciate realistic characters, realistic situations, and their realistic outcomes much more than a Happily Ever After. Sometimes, a HEA will do nothing more than piss your readers off. With or without a HEA, one of the very core elements of any book is the change that takes place within the main character(s). I never let my characters walk away unaffected by everything they've just been through. Over the course of 100-400 pages, even more when we're talking about series, there should always be some kind of change, some kind of consequences, some kind of result. That's not just good writing. That's life.